Send-off Party Becomes Event For The Ages

Jim Spencer

June 16, 1993|By JIM SPENCER Daily Press

A couple of hundred friends and colleagues gathered at a picnic shelter behind the Knights of Columbus Hall in Newport News last week to eat barbecue, drink beer, pitch horseshoes and say goodbye to John Yoho for the 27th time.

In June, 1966, Yoho announced that he was quitting his job as a piping designer at the Newport News Shipyard. He collected some candelabra as going-away gifts, was feted by his pals at a send-off picnic and had such a good time that he hung around for eight more years and eight more parties before he finally hit the road.

But Yoho, now a 51-year-old project engineer for Global Piping in Tampa, Fla., has returned nearly every year since so his buddies can rib him about the going-away gifts he never returned and send him packing once more.

To understand just what an annual ritual this has become you need only look on the serving table by the barbecue where party-goers have turned a large swathe of brown wrapping paper into a makeshift get-well card for Don Phaup.

Phaup, a 26-year veteran of John Yoho parties, missed No. 27 because he had a heart transplant and is still in the hospital in Houston. Phaup is expected back next year for No. 28, along with several dozen party regulars.

``At the first party, they cooked hamburgers and hot dogs,'' Yoho said. ``We played volleyball and other sports that young people do. Some of us kind of got older. All we do now is drink beer and talk.''

``I've probably missed about four parties,'' Yoho continued. ``But they have it whether or not I'm here. And they have as much fun whether or not I'm here.''

For some who attend, John Yoho is little more than an inscription on T-shirts, ball caps and beer mugs. These guys couldn't pick the man himself out in a crowd.

Yoho doesn't care. ``You know,'' he said, ``this party is probably older than some of the people here.''

Not quite. Mike Swain wore a T-shirt memorializing the ``20th Annual John Yoho Going Away Party.'' The electrical designer, who also owns a piece of the Peninsula Poseidons semipro football team, is 27. He was born in January 1966. He was 6 months old when they threw the first John Yoho party.

Now, said Swain, ``It's a big reunion of ship designers.''

And they are pleased to party hearty in anybody's name, even a piping designer who didn't go when he said he was leaving.

``I had a job in Pittsburgh,'' Yoho said. ``But I had a draft deferment with the Newport News shipyard. I would have lost the draft deferment if I left. Plus, the shipyard gave me a substantial raise to stay.''

That made everyone so happy they continued to celebrate each year, even after he really did go.

``For the first 25 years we had the party at Mariners' Museum,'' explained Dick Calfee, whose attendance record at John Yoho send-offs is perfect. ``We had a couple of years where we threw people in Lake Maury as recognition for showing up. Some were supervisors. Some were management.''

Wet or dry, everybody who showed up used to be men. That changed some years back when women began to join the shipyard's design departments in force.

Now, if you're a designer, nobody cares whether you are man or woman, old or young, fat or thin. You may, however, have to answer for changes in appearance.

``Garland,'' Yoho called to an old buddy he hadn't seen in a while. ``What's with that hair?''